


Suptober Day 20: Home

by tiamatv



Series: Promptober 2020 [19]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Domesticity in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean feels his shoulders relax downwards when Cas says, in his low rumble, “It’s the blue towel for the dishes, not the white one.”“Why?” Jack asks. "The white towel is more dry."“Because the white towel is for countertops. It can be bleached,” Cas says, firmly.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Promptober 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954990
Comments: 56
Kudos: 305





	Suptober Day 20: Home

**Author's Note:**

> [Pallas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PallasPerilous/pseuds/PallasPerilous) inspired the dishtowel discussion!
> 
> This is mostly gen with just a fluff of Destiel. It's also tooth-rotting. I make no apologies for this. (Okay, maybe a few apologies.)

Dean hears them before he sees them, and grins.

It’s kind of like the punch line to a weird joke, isn’t it? An angel in a trench coat and the spawn of Satan walk into the kitchen of a secret underground bunker…

“No, Jack!” Cas sounds alarmed enough, though, that Dean momentarily stiffens reflexively. He’s about to go for either his gun or for a first-aid kit just out of body memory before he remembers: it’s Cas in there. If Jack grabbed a hot pan—and he’s accidentally done that, now that he’s human and he can’t do completely freaky things like stab himself painlessly anymore—Cas can take better care of him than any amount of betadine and Band-aids ever could.

But it doesn’t keep Dean’s stomach from automatically plunging first anyway. Jack’s so damned _fragile,_ now.

Dean feels his shoulders relax downwards when Cas says, in his low rumble, “It’s the _blue_ towel for the dishes, not the white one.”

“Why?” Jack asks. “The white towel is more dry.”

Yeah, kid, always with the ‘why.’ It gives Dean deja-vu, sometimes. He got that sort of thing from Ben, sometimes: he would ask Dean questions he didn’t want to ask his mom, or things he felt he _couldn’t_ ask his mom. But Ben wouldn’t have given two shits about towels.

It feels like a really fucking long time ago, sometimes.

“Because the white towel is for countertops. It can be bleached,” Cas says, firmly.

“Oh!” Jack chirps up. “Because it’s white. Like bedsheets. And underwear. It won’t get _spots_.”

“Exactly,” Cas agrees.

Aw, just listen to ‘em. Big little angel learned so well—even though his own clothes don’t _have_ to be laundered, and he doesn’t sleep, much less use bedsheets. Dean’s proud of him. (Dean has no idea about Cas’s underwear. Nope. Not thinkin’ ‘bout it.)

The nephilim’s not doing so bad, either, even if Jack always seems to use too much detergent.

Dean’s about to go in there, put down the glass that he was gonna fill with milk—shut up, he can drink milk if he wants, why the fuck not?—and help out a little. Maybe mop. (Cas hates mopping. No-one knows why.) The kitchen’s always so damned filthy now with all of Sam’s stooges and the little apocalypse hunters cluttering up the place.

Then Jack, with a soft rattle of plates, asks, “Castiel, why does it even matter if the countertop towel can be bleached?”

Oh, this is gonna be good. Dean grins to himself and crosses his arms, leaning against the wall to listen instead.

(To his credit, at least the kid doesn’t sound pissy about it the way his angel dad would.)

Cas’s sigh is about deep enough to blow away the world. “Bleach kills bacteria. Dean is concerned about bacterial contamination getting from the countertop onto the drying dishes. Or… cross-contamination? Salmonella. Something like that, I suppose.”

(Oh, ‘Dean is concerned,’ huh? Yep. See? Pissy.)

Dean can almost hear the flap of Jack blinking, he doesn’t need angel ears for _that_. He almost expects, “Castiel, what’s cross-contamination?”

But Jack sounds confused and a little indignant—‘indignant,’ Dean thinks, is just about the most perfect fucking word to describe Castiel most of the time, so maybe Jack learned this mannerism from him—when he comments, “But… has something changed in the kitchen since I lost my grace?”

“What do you mean?” Cas asks.

“Well, I remember there’s far more bacteria on the kitchen sponge that we’re using to _wash_ the dishes than that towel. Or the countertop. Or the _floor_. So what’s there to cross-contaminate?”

Wait. What? What the _fuck?_

“Oh. Yes, I know,” Cas sighs.

“And there’s no salmonella on the white towel anyway! That’s the little rods with the red spots, right? And the little wiggly things on the outside of them that are short, not long? I mean, I can’t see them anymore, but those are the ones, right?” Jack’s getting revved up, now, and Dean’s not sure whether to be relieved there’s no salmonella on the towel they use to dry off and clean the countertop or weirded out by the fact that Cas and Jack could apparently _see bacteria_ and never said a goddamned thing about it.

“Yes, that’s right,” Cas agrees, and it’s gentle with the kid, ‘cause that’s the way Cas always talks to Jack. “I know, Jack. You’re right.”

“So it makes no _sense_ ,” Jack finishes. There’s a loud clatter, then a mumbled, “ _Ow_.”

“Here. Did you hurt yourse—no? Alright.” Cas is quiet for a little while after that, and Dean’s now trying to figure just how horrified he is by what Jack said about the kitchen sponge, or if he’s weirdly proud of how clean the kitchen floor is.

(He doesn’t care what they think they can see. Blue towel plates, white towel countertop. If they can see bacteria, they can _damned_ well remember that.)

There’s a soft rattling clink of dishes being stacked, and the gentle creak of one of the dish cabinets coming open. Then there’s more rattling, a quiet, “Here, I’ll hold that,” before Cas speaks up again, in a quiet rumble, “Well… Jack, do you remember _why_ we stack the plates like this?”

“Because Dean is a grumpy bear if he can’t get to the mug he likes in the morning, and Sam dropped a plate on the floor once because the big plate was on top of the little plate and he wanted the little plate? And the big plate broke, and everyone was mad,” Jack answers, hesitantly.

Cas chuckles softly, and the sound is like pulling into the garage after a long ride with the windows down.

The guy sounds _happy_. He actually sounds happy.

Fatherhood’s been real good for Cas—he laughs more, now. Dean never spent much time thinking about it before, especially with that whole mess with Claire—they all know that he and Sam get that angry kid better than Cas ever will, and fuck, he can’t even blame her for having a hard time sometimes looking into the face of a celestial tower of awkward light wrapped up in her dad’s skin. He’s always known Cas as _Cas,_ and never as Jimmy, and Cas buys Grumpy Cat at the Hot Topical and knows fuck-all about talking to teenagers.

But Cas’s whole life has been about his duties and responsibilities, as far as Dean can tell. He never thought—or realized, maybe—that Cas might _enjoy_ this duty: having someone to guide, someone to be gentle with, not just, well, heavenly seraph of doom or some shit.

“Yes, Jack,” Cas agrees, warmly. “Exactly. It’s so Dean can get his mug and Sam doesn’t drop things.”

He can almost see that crinkle appearing between Jack’s eyebrows and his blond head doing the little drop to the side. Dean leans his back against the wall and smiles, turning his empty glass around and around in his hand. He doesn’t ask questions about _how_ it happened—Dean has the feeling he won’t like the answer—but he’s really fucking glad the kid looks so much more like, well, _Cas_ than Lucifer.

“Okay?” Jack finally chirps, sounding confused.

“Things should be where they are, because this is Sam’s and Dean’s home—it’s _our_ home—and we want our home to be comfortable and safe for the people we love,” Cas continues, and plates keep clinking even though something suddenly punched up from his chest and is clogging up Dean’s throat now, and his ears have started ringing. “So we do things that sometimes might not make a lot of sense to us at times, if it’s something that makes them feel comfortable in this, our shared space. Because it’s how we can show we love them without having to say it aloud.”

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Dean doesn’t really have the words to process how that makes him feel. He’s got a shoulder against the wall, now, the cement digging hard into his joint so the painful pressure of it grounds him, and he’s not sure when he put it there. His whole body shudders, once.

“Like… stack plates a funny way! And use the white towels instead of the blue towels on the countertop. Oh! And put the books back in the library in an order that’s only slightly better than random. Like that?” Jack asks. “Because that matters to them even if it doesn’t make sense to to us.”

“Mmhmm—oh, careful.”

“Oh.” The plates clunk gently. “That’s smart, Cas.”

Cas chuckles. “I might not be very good at being an angel,” he says, wryly, “but I guess I do know a few things more than you do.”

Two more clinks and a rattle of silverware later, Dean’s chest has unclamped enough that he can let himself straighten off the wall and breathe again. He knows Cas didn’t mean any of it like _that_ , but sometimes it’s still hard to hear how fucking _easily_ Cas says the words, sometimes. Just as Dean’s about to sneak off and fill his tumbler up with whiskey instead of that milk he was planning on, because he’s really not over that shit, Jack speaks up again.

“Is that why we’re talking like this even though Dean’s right outside the door, Cas?” he asks, completely fucking guilelessly. “So you can tell him you love him but you don’t have to say it to his face?”

Dean drops his glass. He doesn’t even hear it shatter.

_Sonofabitch._

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I really, REALLY like writing parenting fluff, don't I...
> 
> <3 Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's been leaving comments--you have no idea how good they make me feel and how they help push through what, on some days, feels like an interminable amount of writing! I AM going to start trying to catch up with comment replies tomorrow!


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